In a negotiation, a conflict, or in managing a relationship, your ability to regulate yourself is a crucial component of your success.

Perhaps more importantly, this ability is an important variable affecting your experience of day-to-day life, and perhaps even your "success" in the broadest sense of the word. Indeed, in this increasingly "always-on" world, we believe the art of regulating yourself is even more important than it has traditionally been.

Why? Because there are more stimuli and more levers pulling on us - almost incessantly - compared to perhaps any other time in human history.

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Although you will find various definitions explaining what self-regulation means, for our purposes we will define it simply to mean using forethought before diving into a project or endeavour, and after-thought as it takes shape.

The good news is that self-regulation is not an inborn trait or gift that some of us have and others don't. The bad news is that we all have to learn it, and build on it again and again.

Self-regulation provides us with a 'future-time' perspective: a time when we form the belief that we can do the thing that's being asked of us; when we set goals and anticipate the results if we succeed (or consider the consequences if we fail), and a time when we motivate and encourage ourselves.(1)

It also provides us with 'reflection after the fact' or a 'past-time' perspective, which is about seeing problems or mistakes as an opportunity not only to fix them, but to develop competencies.

In order to learn self-regulation, Barry Zimmerman of the City University of New York, a foremost researcher in the field, suggests we create a three-part personal plan before diving into an endeavour.